SKIP MILLER

The only good thing about it was, it was played early enough in the day so everybody could go out, have a nice evening meal and still be home in time for Masterpiece Theater.

"We don't have any choice but to wipe this one out of our memory," Coach Terry Holland said. "There's not a lot of positive things we can get from this one."

Nope, there wasn't. It started with Louisville's Everick Sullivan and Keith Williams pumping back-to-back 3-pointers. It ended with Louisville's Cornelius Holden and Jerome Harmon matching dunks.

During the 39 minutes between those sets of shots, everybody who played witness found out why the Cardinals have won 20 games and are ranked 18th. And why the Cavaliers can't beat a team like the Cardinals.

A superior force that was supposed to win hammered an undermanned foe that was supposed to lose. That was the simple truth of it. There were no fables or surprises. There were no glass slippers, no napping hares, and no Buster Douglas.

It was reality. It was what Mike Tyson was expected to do to Douglas in last week's heavyweight championship.

Virginia could have played with two basketballs and still been clobbered. Virginia was out of business on defense and shot itself out of business on offense.

Defensively, the Cavaliers were "between the rock and the hard place," Holland said.

It was more like playing in traffic. The Cavaliers could mess with the cars and get run over by a truck. Or vice versa. It was not going to escape both.

In the first half, Virginia made 7-foot center Felton Spencer have a miserable time. He was sandwiched in a double-team - one guard to swat at the ball every time Spencer touched it and one forward or center to muscle him around.

Spencer missed the only shot he took in the first half. But Sullivan buried all four 3-point attempts he put up - the Cardinals missed only one of seven 3-point attempts.

The Cavaliers were trailing by nine points at halftime. Holland had to gamble. He had to move his defense to stop the outside shots, let the Cardinals go inside to Spencer, and hope for the best.

Spencer scored six of Louisville's first eight points of the second half.

Holland found himself facing checkmate with his team losing by 10 and 17 minutes left on the clock.

Defensively, there was no right decision for Holland to make. He settled on trying a little bit of everything. Even a fullcourt press.

And what was going on with the Cavalier offense was even more numbing.

Louisville coach Denny Crum made sure his players watched tape of Virginia's 81-80 Wednesday night victory over North Carolina. The Cavaliers set school and Atlantic Coast Conference records for 3-point shooting in that game.

Whatever happened, Crum was not going to lose to that kind of perimeter shooting.

"We decided to get out on them, get hands up and make them do something different," he said.

Problem is, Virginia can't do anything differently. It's too small to play a power game and too slow for any fastbreak stuff. It depends on minimizing turnovers and making outside shots.

Crum's ploy worked. The Cavaliers went from a record-setting performance to making just 10 percent of their 3-pointers.

Amazingly, Louisville could not attach a blowout to this game. It couldn't maintain a consistent double-digit lead until well into the second half.

With his defense on a yo-yo and his offense neutralized, Holland tried the only other deal available: Make it ugly and hope for the best.

He did all the stuff that sends fans to the exits and starts tavern debates about late-game strategy in the college game.

With three minutes left, trailing by 11, the Cavaliers started fouling. Why? The only thing that did was prolong the agony.

Trailing by 14 and in the game's final minute, Holland was calling timeouts. Every good coach is a better teacher who will take a timeout, regardless of the score, to lecture against sloppy play.

Unfortunately, this time, what was going wrong with Virginia would take more than a timeout to fix.